Story Tropes

[facetofcathy]

I posted my ideas for the story tropes page on the Fanlore Sandbox.  Have a look, make changes or comments as you like, and if we can agree on a new structure for the page, we can then discuss potential name changes.  The original story trope discussion in this community is here.

I would prefer comments be consolidated on Fanlore itself for this, as this is primarily a discussion of coding the new arrangement.  I will be around later today to see what ideas people have, but anyone is welcome to go and rework the page--we can always use the history tab to look at previous versions.

Comments

[meri_oddities]

I'm on my way out and only had a second to look at this, but I thought it looked very good. I'd add: College AU under domesticity. And the Fuck or die trope.

I'll be back in a couple of hours to really take a look.

Thanks!!

[elf]

It occurs to me that I didn't even consider Filk tropes during the earlier discussion. Those are so different it's hard to even parse how to categorize them while looking at the list of story tropes.

I know, discussion should go at Fanlore, but I'm not sure how to even bring up the subject. Hmm, maybe I should spend a few minutes brainstorming filk trope concepts & see what I come up with. (I don't think they'll mesh well with the story tropes. And a lot of filk tropes have never specifically been labeled, other than the vague genre concepts like "humor" or "ballad.")

[facetofcathy]

I minimized the amount of red links I added to the list to keep this from growing out of control. They are easy to add at any time.

As far as filk tropes specifically, I would think that might be a start with the filk page and see if it grows big enough to be separate pages, or even just one separate page of filk tropes.

[facetofcathy]

The fuck or die tropes are all in a section together under sex compulsion.

That's kind of surprising that we don't have a college au page. I'm not sure why highschool and pornstar were under domesticity, I moved them and added college beside highschool

[elf]

After poking through my filk collection, I came up with the following categories of filk (which aren't connected to the mood genres or style-of-poetry/music tropes or, um, other trope categories that might exist):

• Science Fiction, Fandom (Born Again Trek),
• Science Fiction, Original (Dawson's Christian),
• Space Exploration (Hope Eyrie)
• Science Fact (The Designer, Out of a Clear Blue Sky, The Elements)
• Fantasy, Fandom (Moreta's Ride)
• Fantasy, Original (Threes),
• Fantasy, Fairy Tales/Mythology (I'll Be Your Victim, Death Danced at my Party, Captain Jack & the Mermaid)
• Computers/Internet (S-100 Bus),
• Filk tunes to classic poetry/songs (Jabberwocky-as-greensleeves, Kipling-by-Fish)
• Media, not specifically SF/F (Velveteen, Come Ye Droids, Desert Storm, A-Ramboing)
• Fannish Activities—cosplay, SCA, zinemaking, fanfic etc: (Isn't it the Pits, True Story, The Press, I Love Slash)
• Fannish interests: Gaming, comics (You Bash the Balrog, Lois Lane Boogie)
• (meta)Fandom, General or Specific (At the Worldcon, Gordy Dickson),
• Metafilk, General or Specific (Song At the Ready; Singing Banned from Argo),
• Reading/Literature (X Libris, Baby Got Book)
• Creatures (Overflowin' Catbox Blues, Kraken, Monster Lullaby)
• Ballads of Daily Life (Song of the Middle Manager, Two Lawyers, Send It To The Moon)

I tried to limit it to one example per trope except when it's really broad & possibly non-obvious.

(I suppose I'll head over & post them on the Filk page and if they need to, they can eventually migrate. Feels *weird* to do that.)

[facetofcathy]

Well you know if the list is that long, and you think it should be a full page, make one! I know very little about filk, so I'm not trying to say what must be done there. There are already genre specific trope pages, there's a slash trope list for example. With all those examples you have enough info for a whole page there easily, but with the examples it would make the main trope page kind of unweildy.

My feeling is, if it is something where a page for each trope is likely to be made, put it in as a more generic list without examples and leave the discussion to the individual pages, but if a more general discussion of the tropes in filk and how they relate to each other is more likely to get fleshed out than individual pages, then go that way. There's no right and wrong. You could talk about filk about cosplay on the cosplay page or the filk page or both or on a separate page about tropes.

We don't have any specific to vids trope pages or a master list or anything, which might be similar, so this is kind of new ground we're plowing here.

[meri_oddities]

I saw Fuck or Die when I took a second look.

I didn't see forced bonds (probably should go under Domesticity) They a lot in HP and TPM and other magical/SF/Fantasy kinds of stories.

[elf]

:flail:

I feel woefully inadequate to beef up the filk section, in part because I'd worry that there's nobody to step in and fix the bits I get wrong. I've got no idea what "should be" a full page; no idea how to decide which individual filksongs should get entries (none of them? Those that have won awards? Those that have been filked themselves?) and which filkbooks should get entries (there are hundreds; not as many as fanzines, but still lots and lots) and which albums should get entries... eeeeep.

Hrm. Must find access to a high-speed computer on a weekend sometime, 'cos part of my problem with editing is working through dialup; it takes so long for template & nav pages to load that I get frustrated after looking around a bit for the right ones.

(Keep throwing "go do it" stuff at me; it's working. I know there aren't any solid rules & we'll figure out sorting as we go along. And that if I botch things horribly, someone will step in & fix that, even if they don't know the topic at all.)

Filk is a lot like Rule 34. If fans do it, There Is Filk Of It. Or, like Rule 34, if there isn't already filk of it, mentioning that kind of spontaneously calls filk into existence. (Someone asked me if there was filk about "ducks with guns." Three days later, I'd written about post-WWII mutant birds on a rampage.)

It's a *big* topic. It scares me to edit anything connected to it.

[facetofcathy]

I like your list just as it is, and if that's all it ever is, it's an addition that adds to the value of the wiki.

It could also get expanded and be even better, but it doesn't have to be you that does it. (There might be pages for some of that filk already. I know Banned From Argo has a page.)

I hear you on the not knowing what you "should" do though. It's a tough call, and hard with the very small number of editors. I went through all the vid pages today, just because I had read the OTW report on vidding and it got me thinking about their plans and how that might relate to Fanlore. The pages were made years ago and were full of links that went to redirects and right back to the original page and the whole thing is tough to sort out now. I just focused on links for now, and I'm going to think about adding to the Vid page some more.

Some things I find that work are making headings in the hopes someone else fills them in, and leaving pleading messages on the edit summary for help. Sometimes it just doesn't happen, like with the Merlin RPF page, though.

As for the dial up, have you tried saving template pages to your own computer? Or just cut and paste the templates into a word processor or text document with the description of use. Might cut down on some of the load time waits. (I nearly always code new pages off line in a word processor.)

[elf]

Am composing new entry for this comm, so other people can throw brainstormy ideas or motivation at me.

The problem isn't so much the time it takes the template pages to load, as the time it takes to find them. I'm not going to download all several dozen (hundreds?) of templates, especially since if I lose the original folder/link structure, then they're just loose HTML pages in a folder gaah.

I don't mind leaving a dozen or two tabs open to flip between them; the nuisance is in figuring out which ones are what in the first place.

I suppose I need to learn how to make pages. Or the protocol for naming/capitalizing pages, 'cos "make a page" is "go to URL, and if it doesn't exist there's a click-here-to-make-this-page button."

Am composing post.